Category: Orienteering Events Log

I’m never one to skip a chance at orienteering, not only because it’s just a short train ride, but also because it’s one of southern England’s best orienteering areas – indeed parts of the forest feature in my top 10 of all UK areas.

So, last Sunday (the 27th of June) I went along for HAVOC’s Frolic event. This consisted of a 3km race, which everyone ran, followed by another 3km “extension” loop. The main race was on Pole Hill – a fast and easy, and decidedly non-technical area.. The extension – which was run following a short break after the main race, was through parts of Epping Forest itself. It was extremely flat (25m climb in the 3km) and there were large areas of green. However the lack of serious undergrowth, and the beauty of the area, made it a great run. My only mistake was a big one – for some reason I was convinced vandals had nicked Control 7, as it was clearly not where it should have been. It turns around that the map is a little, um, vague, here – the control was at a different path junction to the one it appeared to be on the map. I only realised this on continuing on my way (following 10 minutes of hunting) and spotting the blighter. Ah well. It was a lovely, hot day, but with a cool wind, and sunbathing was the order of the day following the event. My time was respectable for the main race, but with the one big error (and a couple of other really stupid ones) I finished well down the list for the extension race.

Results are here – I’m not quite sure why I got such a big handicap seeing as I am M21, but of course it means I finished higher up the results than I might have deserved.

After missing the Wendover event two weeks ago I was determined to make this, last Sunday, only a few miles from the former. Great Hampden has a reputation for being “green” (ie. lots of undergrowth) and with the event taking place in June, I was expecting something physical. The longer courses took the runners through a very hard, physical section, before running the rest of the race through flat, relatively level forest. Not realising this myself, I was exhausted within 20 minutes, but was able to keep going well in the latter stages, to end up with a not-too-embarrasing time.

Oxford UOC were out in force (as it was the Town vs Gown event) and also the Great Britain Women’s Squad turned up. I don’t think the organisers were expecting this, but it made for some excellent times to aim for on the Brown and Blue courses. I ran Blue myself, in retrospect I could have run Brown, as the extra 3km was in the very flat section and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much.

I had one really big mistake, on the third leg (see extract.) Instead of dropping down the steep, green valley (like most other people) or climbing up and over, I unwisely tried to contour round the steep slopes. This proved to be painful and exhausting, and slow going, and I bashed my head on a hidden branch stump, half-way along. This was pretty concerning (it was bleeding a lot) and I took time out to stem the flow. After I recovered from that though it was relatively plain sailing. I do now however have a nice “Harry Potter” gash on my forehead and must have looked a state on the train back!

Result: 73:49 for 6.5km, 125m climb (11.2 mins/km.) The slow mins/km was entirely due to the disasterous leg expained above. Despite this I finished well near the top of the results list, and I’m quite pleased about this.

Having turned up here on a Sunday back in January, only to (later) realise that the event had been the previous day, I was determined to get back ot this promising looking country park for its next orienteering event. So last Wednesday I disappeared early from work to compete here in a local event.

Weald Park really is gorgeous to look at on a nice day (the evening sun shining through some of the ancient woodland was simply beautiful to behold) and I seriously believe that it would be able to host a World Park Race and show itself off in style. You could have the finish arena to end all finish arenas here. Sadly it’s a small area, and not technical, but ideal for a Blue colour coded course (5.7 km) which is what I did. Large parts of the park are gently rolling, short grassland, across which you can sprint like lightning.

Result: 47:08 for 5.7km, 125m climbing (8.3 mins/km.) I’m quite happy with this result, seeing as I hadn’t done any orienteering for six weeks before this.

Lake District maps are always full of technical and physical goodness, and Graythwaite – the area for the JK International event this Easter, was no exception. However the course planning for M21S was uninspired (especially on the first day, where we effectively visited all parts of the map except the really interesting section in the middle) and my bad knee played up badly after the first day, causing me to bail out mid-way through the second day. The long walk back to the finish was rather traumatic too. However the finish arena and assembly field was dramatic and beautiful and with the weather being nice too, it was great to laze around after the race.

I made some right stinkers/tools/technical mistakes on the first day – one was from 8 to 9 (see right.) For some reason I decided to contour, rather than go straight or drop down the slope to the east. There were many spurs and reentrants on the route which made this course painful, and I ended up a little lower than I thought. The 9th control was (I think) closer to the edge of the level area than the map appeared, and I eneded up running right past the control, just above it, at least three times (at one point, relocating right to the large fence/track junction beyond.)

In all, not a true classic like Bigland, but still an area to show off what the Lake District was all about.

British Student Championships (BUSA) 2004, organised by OUOC – Individual Race, 6th March 2004.

Sometime last I was actually planning to plan this (no pun intended) race but as events transpired OUOC chose Luke M to plan the event, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to run at least part of his excellent course. I started the race aware of my knee injury from the previous week, but any thought that I could ignore the injury soon
evaporated after the fourth control, and I had to retire from the event, in considerable pain. It was doubly frustrating because Longmoor is a superb area – fast and open, but with enough contour detail to slow down the best from Edinburgh and Sheffield. What I saw was great, and I could have run a great run, but it was not to be this year.

The area is a military training area, which always makes an event more interesting – out of bounds really means out of bounds on these maps, unless you want to step on an unexploded bomb. The army was also carrying out
riot control drills, which made control 7 a rather interesting control to visit. A smell of fuel was in the area, the gorse was burnt, and it took only a few seconds to realise that the shiny objects on the ground were – petrol bombs.

The map extract above shows the intricate bit I didn’t get near to before retiring. The numerous tracks are tank tracks and as such not trival to cross! The extract to the left is simply here for posterity, to note the damn marsh that nearly everyone on the Men’s A course fell into, including several of the elites. I
heard plenty of people swearing about this one afterwards… It’s the blue line just above Control 3 – it’s actually a lot bigger a marsh than is indicated on the map.

Anyway well done to OUOC (my old club) for organising the event professionally and slickly. I was one of the proponents at the club AGM that we should go ahead and organise, and it was great to see the project come to fruition and have familiar faces behind one of UK orienteering’s premier events, even if I was just a competitor at the end of it, and an injured one at that.

District Event (SO), 29 Feburary 2004 – This was on a map not used for 25 years, and what a gem it is. I was running Brown (the top course) and after getting covered in tree sap following an initial few legs through very rough coniferous forest, the area opened out into a very nice, “lost forest” section that we were lucky enough to run through twice. I didn’t make many significant mistakes (save the one highlighted below) and had another good run – after last week’s good run also, I was starting to feel I’d found my form for this season. (And then I go and get injured the following day, more on that in a later entry…) The really pleasant section is shown in the map extract on the right. As you can see, it isn’t all that technical at all, but there’s enough in there to make it
interesting.

My result: 8.24km/115m – 67:53 (8.2 mins/km). Full results are here.

One annoying mistake I made (annoying as it was a careless one and was just a result of me starting to tired near the race end) was overshooting on the approach to number 22. For some reason I forgot to check my compass, hit the
marsh leading into 23, and proceeded along that, expecting to find 22. Of course, 22 is actually not really in a marsh at all – more of a slight ditch, and so I had to retrace my steps – 60-90s lost there.

Regional Event, 22 February 2004 – I turned up and ran the open short course (M21S) on this rather attractive map – my first experience of the delights of Ashdown Forest in the South Downs. The warren itself is nearly inpenetrable as it’s very thickly vegetated (or “green” in O-speak.) However the surrounding sections consist of extremely pleasant, lightly forested woodland. The area is quite steep for Southern England, and I was expecting a slow time (225m of climb for the short course is much more than normal) but I got around pretty fast. A couple of legs were so attractive, that if the whole map had been like this, I wouldn’t hesitate to place this forest in my Top 10 UK areas of all time.

I had a near faultless run, just a little slow as usual. The extract shows on of my favourite legs – on running from 9 to 10, I crossed the good open ground on the left and ran straight down the wide ride running east, peeling off at the last possible moment. The terrain was suprisingly heathery – it could have been part of Scotland.

My result, for 7.1km/225m – 57:42 (8.1 mins/km.) I finished 2nd which was a nice result and my highest for a long time. (Full results here.) It really didn’t feel like 225m of climbing at all. My energy at the finish though was somewhat tempered though by the thought of the impending 4 mile walk back to the train station.

15th February at Swinley Forest, Bracknell (BKO) – The Concorde Chase.
This was off the back of a large hangover from the Valentines’ Night bop at Oxford. Fresh off the train, I was feeling a bit rough. The area was, despite being very flat, rather uninspirational, and dare I say it even, boring. Indeed, I really gave up bothering to get a good time in, about half way around. Although perhaps that’s just the alcohol speaking. Or the fact we were using the ungainly EMIT bricks for the electronic punching, rather than the de-facto standard, and more user-friendly SportIdent system. Oxford were out in force too though, so I had plenty of splits to compare with for my course. They also kindly gave me a lift back to Ascot – cheers guys!

My result: M21S (7.3km, 50m climb): 65:56. 9.0 mins/km. I really should have done better, but… I just didn’t care today.

The map extract shows one of the more interesting sections of the course – Control 12 was up a steep slope here. The area in general however was more tedious than it looked – very bleak, very military.

7th February at Wimbledon Common (JOK) – The Varsity Match 2004.
After last year’s triumph with the Oxford team, and a half blue later, this year I was running for the
ex-Oxford club, JOK. Despite Wimbledon being down the road from where I live, I still managed to start late. The area is very nice, with some attractive, remote sections in the middle, though with a rather scrappy northern section. The courses made good use of all Wimbledon Common has to offer. No Wombles spotted, but the common was clean so they must be doing their work.

My result: Men’s A (11.4km): 100:15. 8.8 mins/km, not too shabby I thought on the back of no exercise, but a bottom 20% result due to all the l33t Oxford runners about, and the fact that the course got dark for my final three controls.

The map extract above shows one of the more interesting (if green) parts of the course. I overshot quite badly coming to Control 3 – due to the intricate brown detail mixed in amongst the green – and also at Control 4 – this was a case of just climbing too high up the rather subtle slopes. The yellow area shown is part of a golf course, which we weren’t allowed one, hence the rather interesting shape.

I missed the relays due to mis-timing the distance to Waterloo… So the GS-JOK team ended up with one member doing the first and last legs. Sorry Alan!

28th December 2003 at Yellowcraigs (ELO) – The Festive Frolic.
I’ve probably orienteering at Yellowcraigs the most of any map – perhaps 10 times (The Frolic’s an annual event, always on this map, and I’ve been orienteering for very nearly a decade now.) This year the event was a one hour
score, but you had to solve a riddle for each control, then visit them in alphabetical order (you could have visited them all randomly and then re-run in the correct order, but this would have doubled the race length.) The clues were pretty hard, and I didn’t get further than “P” before running out of time. The best strategy in retrospect would have indeed been to visit all the controls in tight order, note down their letters and then re-run the course in race order – while it would have been the winning strategy it would also have been very tiring! Needless to say, a former club contemporary and British Team member, Murray Strain, would have won this event easily, but for a technicality. Indeed this is probably the only event ever where I finished further up the scoreboard than he did…

My result: 16 controls in 59 minutes. The results are here.

No map extract I’m afraid as I’ve left my map at the family home in Scotland…